America, The Rorschach Test

One thing I like about having lived in the States is that gives you some perspective when reading articles about the place. Frequently, what people write about the States is actually far more revealing about themselves, in often completely unintentional ways, than it is about the US itself.

Take this op-ed in the New York Times. The writer Alaa Al Aswany offers a critique of America, and Obama in particular, for his silence on the recent fighting in Gaza. I guess one of his key quotes would be where he summarizes a variety of Egyptian opinion after the recent Gaza fighting:

I thus concluded that no matter how many envoys, speeches or interviews Mr. Obama offers to us, he will not win the hearts and minds of Egyptians until he takes up the injustice in the Middle East. I imagine the same holds true for much of the greater Muslim world.

You could crudely, but more or less accurately, summarize the article as arguing that (1) a lot of Egyptians like Obama, (2) America is not being fair in mediating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and hence (3) Egyptians are not going to really trust the new administration until it starts addressing addressing injustice in the Middle East, specifically in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

I am often puzzled when I read articles like this. For starters, does the writer really understand American or Israeli politics? To simply say that the States should simply become a fair mediator in the conflict glosses an enormous amount of complexity as well as the limited amount of leverage that the new administration actually possesses. Alaa Al Aswany has lived in Chicago and should have some familiarity with this, but it doesn't come through in his article.

But the most gob smacking aspect is that from Alaa Al Aswany's perspective, America's entire relationship with the Middle East, and somewhat more breathlessly, the entire Muslim world, can be boiled down to this single conflict. Really? And more importantly, should it? American aid to Egypt, over $30 billion since the mid 1970s; American involvement in ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan; American military support for Muslims in Kosovo and strong American support for Turkey are all irrelevant compared to this one issue.

I might happen to agree with Al Aswany's basic idea, that a more even-handed American approach to this conflict would be a good idea. But one of the more ugly side-effects of the Palestinian-Israel conflict is that it seems to suck up American time and energy that could theoretically be better applied to far worse conflicts, such as those in Sudan, Congo or Zimbabwe, where many, many more people are dying.

I would love to read something by Al Aswany on any of these topics: after all Sudan is actually next door to Egypt and Congo sits just below Sudan. The Arab League even has its headquarters in Cairo, though I haven't read much about pressure being applied on Sudan by Arab governments. But then again, I would hate to judge a country by just one aspect of their foreign policy.